DID WALMART DISCRIMINATE AGAINST A MILLION WOMEN?

It’s an really, REALLY unfun month for big corporations trying to dodge lawsuits from gaggles of angry women.

First Walmart. Monday’s New York Times editorial explains the matter well.

For nine years, Wal-Mart has fought to stave off a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company has long discriminated against its female workers in pay and promotions. So far it has avoided a trial on the merits of the issue. The battleground instead is whether the million or so women who have worked for Wal-Mart since 2001 really constitute a class, which the company vigorously disputes. In 2004, a federal district court judge said they did, and in April the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, ruling the case could proceed.

Now Wal-Mart has taken the class issue to the Supreme Court. It is probably a smart legal move, given the court’s clear tendency to rule in favor of corporations, particularly when big classes or discrimination claims are involved. We hope the court resists the temptation to toss out the case, which would force women to file lawsuits one by one. Wal-Mart’s employment practices deserve a full hearing.

Agreed.

It seems the whole thing started when nine women working for WalMart realized that they were being paid less than men who did the same work, plus the guys were being promoted more often.

A district judge who found in favor of the women noted that, according to statistics, women working in Walmarts in every region of the country were being similarly underpaid when compared to their male counterparts.

What the Supremes will have to decide is whether that means every one of the one million woman working at Walmart have been discriminated against. In other words, do the female workers at Walmart constitute a class? Or should their suits be—as a very jittery Walmart hopes—simply taken on a case by case basis.

One million women in a class action suit would make the Walmart action the largest employment discrimination lawsuit in American history—a stellar designation that Walmart would prefer to avoid.

WHICH BRINGS US TO PREMPRO—FEWER WOMEN SUING, BUT BIG POTENTIAL PAYOUTS

PremPro is the hormone replacement drug that, at one time, was the most popular on the market. It is made up of Premarin, a form of estrogen that is made from the urine of pregnant mares (gross, but there you have it), and Provera, a form of artificial progesterone.

Wyeth made Premarin, Upjohn, Provera. Wyeth eventually packaged the two together as PremPro. And, for years, doctors prescribed by the bucketful.

Around 20 years ago, however, some of the nation’s more research-savvy OB/GYNs stopped prescribing PremPro when other hormone replacements drugs were developed that more closely mimicked the body’s own original hormones, and thus were deemed safer (and had fewer side-effects).

Still the preponderance of American doctors continued to go with the familiar PremPro. To date, it is estimated around 6 million women worldwide have taken the drug.

Then in 2002, the Women’s Health Initiative made headlines when they stopped a massive study (sponsored by the National Institute of Health), after they found that women in the study who took PremPro were more likely to get breast cancer than those who did not.

PremPro-taking women with breast cancer wondered if Wyeth had suspected the risks and ignored them. Lawsuits resulted. Then more lawsuits.

Pfizer bought Wyeth around a year ago (and Upjohn in 2003)– along with it, as many as 9000 lawsuits filed by women with breast cancer who claimed that PremPro was, at least in part, to blame for their illness—and that Pfizer/Wyeth hid what they knew of its dangers..

At first, Wyeth/Pfizer was able to get a bunch of suits dismissed, but now the stronger suits are arriving in court, and the tide appears to have turned.

Out of the 12 cases that have thus far gotten in front of a jury, the score is Pfizer 5, women 7. (Here’s the result of one such case from last year., in which the jury concluded that the drug company purposely hid the risk of cancer.)

At the end of last week, Pfizer settled another case before trial.

Monday, a Pennsylvania Superior Court gave plaintiffs another win when she ruled that the two-year statue of limitations for women who allege their breast cancer was caused by PremPro started, not from the day they were diagnosed with cancer, but from the day the Women’s Health Initiative study was released.

Stay tuned. This issue is far from over.

The US Supreme Court gave death row inmate Troy Davis a rare chance to prove himself innocent of the murder of the 1989 murder of off-duty Savannah police officer, Mark McPhail. For more than 20 years, Davis has contended he is innocent of the crime and has begged for a chance to present the evidence. On Tuesday, a Federal Judge ruled that his evidence was not convincing.

Here’s what the AP said:

The NAACP, Amnesty International and dignitaries such as former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI have rallied behind Davis. A year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Davis a federal hearing to put his innocence claim to the test — a chance afforded no other American in at least 50 years.

U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. said the evidence presented by Davis’ attorneys at a June hearing wasn’t nearly strong enough to prove he’s innocent.

“Ultimately, while Mr. Davis’s new evidence casts some additional, minimal doubt on his conviction, it is largely smoke and mirrors,” the judge said.

The ruling sets the stage for Georgia officials to resume planning Davis’ execution, though his attorneys vowed to appeal.

NOTE: Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog has a terrific analysis of the judge’s ruling, for those interested in such things.

NOTE 2: For background on the original Supreme Court ruling on Davis and links to his story as a whole, go to this earlier WLA post on the matter.

I was just muttering to myself about the whole Clemens/perjury indictment thingy when I happened to read what Scott Henson wrote at his wonderful blog Grits for Breakfast, which said what I was thinking better than I would have.

Here’s Henson:

The post is short, so I’ve pasted it in its entirety:

BECAUSE ALL THE OTHER BIG PROBLEMS HAVE BEEN SOLVED….

Obama’s Justice Department today indicted Texas baseball legend “Rocket” Roger Clemens for perjury related to alleged steroid use, reports USA Today. See the indictment (pdf). The allegations rest primarily on the word of a snitch who turned on Clemens to avoid prosecution himself.

This seems to me like a massive waste of time and resources and an extremely poor exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Making the situation appear even more hypocritical, as I pointed out before Clemens’ ill-advised testimony to Congress, “We couldn’t get Condi Rice to testify under oath about 9/11, and myriad Bush administration officials under the GOP Congress were allowed to appear before Congress without risk of perjury charges if they lied,” but the feds are using Clemens’ Congressional testimony as a perjury trap to go after baseball’s all-time strike leader for no good reason I can identify. Hell, even Henry Waxman who chaired the hearing where Clemens allegedly committed perjury later said he regretted staging the event. The whole fiasco was a bad idea from the get-go and this indictment just makes matters worse.

Perjury is a crime that’s prosecuted very selectively, with many obvious instances routinely overlooked by prosecutors. Federal prosecutors are going after Clemens because of his star power, not because he poses some terrific threat to the public, or for that matter to anyone but a batter on the receiving end of a beanball.

NOTE: I normally don’t snatch whole blog posts, so do me a favor and also go check out the site for other stories, like this amusing vacation post on…um…”graffiti tourism.“)

AND IN OTHER NEWS…..THE CALIFORNIA STATE ASSEMBLY PASSED BILL SAYING CLERGY CAN MARRY (OR NOT MARRY) WHOMEVER THEY WANT

It was the law anyway (See First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution), but hopefully this bill will make those jittery about the issue feel better. And maybe it will also jam a stick in the spokes of the gay marriage disinformation machine.

Here’s a clip from the statement released by the folks at California Equality.

The California Assembly today passed the Civil Marriage Religious Freedom Act (SB 906) in a 46-25 vote. The bill, introduced by Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and co-sponsored by Equality California and California Council of Churches IMPACT, protects clergy from performing any civil marriage that is contrary to the tenets of his or her faith. The bill also protects religious institutions from losing their tax-exempt status for refusing to perform any civil marriage, and deepens the distinction in state law between religious and civil marriage by defining the latter as a civil contract that requires a state-issued marriage license.

“Opponents of marriage equality have falsely claimed that allowing same-sex couples to marry will force clergy to violate the tenets of their faiths,” said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California. “This bill should alleviate any concerns that restoring marriage equality will require clergy to perform weddings inconsistent with their faith.”

“This bill simply affirms that California is a diverse state, and that we can all co-exist and make space for each others’ beliefs without compromising the tenets of any religious group or individual,” said Senator Leno. “With the recent federal court ruling, we know that marriage for same-sex couples in California is on the horizon. Under the Civil Marriage Religious Freedom Act, churches and clergy members who fear their religious views are threatened by marriage equality will have clear and solid protections under state law. In addition, churches that welcome same-sex couples will continue to fully recognize those families within their faith.”

SO, EXACTLY WHAT PART OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT DID JUDGE HILLERI MERRITT NOT UNDERSTAND?

Friday’s LA Times editorial explains it all:

A unanimous panel of California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal has at last cleaned up a shameful legal mess, ordering L.A. County Superior Court Judge Hilleri G. Merritt to end her prior restraint on the Los Angeles Times.

Earlier this month, after first granting The Times the right to photograph a criminal defendant appearing in her courtroom, Merritt changed her mind and ordered the paper not to publish the lawfully taken picture. The Times, showing more respect for the law than Merritt did, obeyed her order while it appealed, first to her to reconsider and later, when she refused, to the higher court. On Thursday, that court inevitably concluded, as it was required to, that she had violated the 1st Amendment.

Writing for himself and two colleagues, Judge Sanjay T. Kumar produced a stark reminder of just how far Merritt had strayed from well-established law in waging her campaign against open courts and a free press. Riffling through citations, the court noted that “an order enjoining publication of a photograph of a suspect in a pending court proceeding is classic prior restraint of speech.” Publishing “lawfully obtained, truthful information about a matter of public significance cannot be restrained unless it is necessary to protect a state interest of the highest order.” And the “barriers to prior restraint remain high and the presumption against its use continues intact.” Not once, as Kumar made clear, has any appellate court concluded that those barriers could be overcome in a case such as this…

Read the rest.

And here’s the news story by Andrew Blankstein on the same topic.

And here is a previous LAT editorial on the matter.

AND here’s what Wired Magazine had to say earlier this month.

By the way, it is not entirely comforting that a criminal court judge hearing high profile cases has such a high-handed and faulty an understanding of the legal principal prohibiting prior restraint.

FYI: The photo above is from an LAPD handout of murder defendant Alberd Tersargyan—whose in-court photo—taken originally with the permission of the judge—was the one in question.

TRUTANICH’S GRAND JURY

Tuesday the City Council is tentatively scheduled to discuss SB 1168, the bill that would allow City Attorney Carmen Trutanich to have his own grand jury. The bill has passed the state senate and with a trip to the state assembly still ahead.

The City Council will decide whether or not it is in favor of the bill. Councilmembers Jan Perry and Bernard Parks are strongly opposed, and would like the idea to be put to a vote of the residents of Los Angeles.

COUNTY SUPERVISORS EXPECTED TO VOTE $400,000TO SETTLE JUVENILE HALL MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE/WRONGFUL DEATH LAWSUIT

Also on Tuesday, the LA County Supervisors are scheduled to vote to settle a lawsuit brought by the parents of Tremayne Cole.

The bare bones of the case, which is expected to be settled for $400,000, are as follows:

According to the county’s own report, on February 5, 2008, a short, skinny, 14-year-old boy named Tremayne Cole was placed in one of LA County’s juvenile halls, Los Padrinos. Four days later, on February 9, Tremayne complained of a bad headache, a tooth ache, and he was running a fever. Although he was given medication, he was reportedly not seen by either a doctor or a dentist until around February 17 when he had grown so sick that he was transferred to LA County-USC hospital. Tremayne died of complications of meningitis on March 4, 2008.

Tremayne’s parents allege that the adults in charge dropped the ball on their son pretty much at every step.

City Attorney Carmen Trutanich’s quest to acquire his own personal Grand Jury continues.

The controversial bill, SB1168, that would allow the city attorney to get what he wants, is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee on June 27.

Meanwhile, Councilwoman’s Jan Perry’s resolution to oppose the idea may or may not be brought up in the council today, Friday. (Everyone is waiting for the fiscal report on the bill by the City’s Administrative Officer (CAO).

BUT THE BIG NEWS AROUND THIS ISSUE is the fact that Trutanich received a nasty blow this week when the California District Attorneys Association wrote Gil Cedillo, the bill’s sponsor, to say that, thank you very much, but they would NOT be supporting this measure.

The DAs also opined that the grand jury Trutanich wanted was “potentially unconstitutional.”

Word is that Trutanich, was really, really not happy at this outcome. Vocally not happy.

Anyway….here is the heart of it the district attorneys’ Dude-I-don’t-think-so letter :

On behalf of the California District Attorneys Association (CDAA), I regret to inform you that we are opposed to your measure, SB 1168, as amended on May 25,2010. This bill would allow the Los Angeles City Attorney to request the impanelment of a misdemeanor grand jury.

[SNIP]

More concerning is that the measure proposes a potentially unconstitutional arrangement because the misdemeanor grand jury would exist simply as an investigative tool. Grand jurors would only have the power to subpoena witnesses as well as hear andrecord their testimony; there would be no power to indict. This bill creates something that has never existed before: a grand jury with no ability either to determine that a crime has not occurred or to indict. Such a system would likely face a charge that it is a sham and a violation of the separation of powers.

Specifically, the argument would be that a judicial agency (the grand jury) is being used to
carry out an executive function (the investigation of crime) and that this grand jury performs no judicial function because it does not have the power to independently evaluate the evidence and render an opinion whether there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed.

Although this bill might provide the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office with a helpful tool, we
must consider the potential impact on other prosecutors. The grand jury performs an important function and we do not want to risk losing it…..

ON A COMPLETELY UNRELATED MATTER…..ZOMBIES

If you’ve already finished being aghast at the great welfare-to-casino debacle, and/or Antonio’s ongoing ticket idiocy, then, if by some odd chance you haven’t yet read the Guardian’s Xan Brooks instantly legendary live blogging of the Isner-Mahut Zombie tennis match at Wimbleton, do it this second. I know I’m late in the bringing this up. But its face-achingly funny. (And, if you’ve already read it, it bears reading again.)

(Everyone says to start at hour 4:05 pm but I’d read the whole damn thing.)

(Screw tennis, I think the guy should start live blogging American politics. it’d make everything more bearable. I’m sure of it.)

UPDATE: By the way, it’s worth noting that Kevin Roderick at LA Observed flagged Brooks’ poetic and gloriously frantic live blogging—and the press follow-up—ahead of anybody else. A few random sports bloggers saw it. But Roderick was out spreading the word early. And I’m glad he did.

WAS IT JUDICIAN MISCONDUCT WHEN A TEXAS JUDGE CLOSED THE DOOR (LITERALLY) ON A LAST MINUTE DEATH ROW APPEAL?

The Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct will decide this week whether or not to sanction Judge Sharon Keller for her actions on the afternoon of September 25, 2007 when, as the presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, she refused to allow her court clerk’s office to stay open slightly after 5 pm to receive an appeal from from public defenders asking for a last minute stay of execution based on a Supreme Court decision that had been handed down earlier that day.

As a consequence, the request for the stay—which it is believed likely would have been granted—wasn’t received and the inmate, Michael Wayne Richard, was executed at 6 pm that same day.

The Dallas Morning News has more as does the Wall Street Journal.

But first you might want to re-read the full back story on this. (WLA posted on the story back in 2007.) It’s…disturbing.

Among other things, Keller could have and should have referred Richard’s lawyers to the judge whom she knew was assigned to hear after hours appeals—but she didn’t bother.

It is not that Michael Richard was a sympathetic character. He wasn’t. But as the Dallas Morning news wrote three years ago of the case:

When the state takes the life of a condemned criminal, it must do so with a sense of sobriety commensurate with its grave responsibility. Hastening the death of a man, even a bad one, because office personnel couldn’t be bothered to bend bureaucratic procedure was a breathtakingly petty act and evinced a relish for death that makes the blood of decent people run cold.

Yep.

A FEDERAL JUDGE QUESTIONS ULTRA LONG SENTENCES FOR THOSE WHO DOWNLOAD CHILD PORN

In Monday’s New York Times A.G. Sulzberger has an interesting story about Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein who has thrown out two convictions for a guy who has downloaded thousands of child porn images from the internet. Weinstein believes the mandatory minimums for what the porn downloader—a married father of three—has done are far too high.
Here’s a representative clip:

There is little public sympathy for collectors of child pornography. Yet across the country, an increasing number of federal judges have come to their defense, criticizing changes to sentencing laws that have effectively quadrupled their average prison term over the last decade.

Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated a 20-year child pornography sentence by ruling that the sentencing guidelines for such cases, “unless applied with great care, can lead to unreasonable sentences.” The decision noted that the recommended sentences for looking at pictures of children being sexually abused sometimes eclipse those for actually sexually abusing a child.

Read the rest. It’s a complex and emotion filled issue, with no absolutely black and white answer. But the questions it raises are important.

I tend to agree with Judge Weinstein, as I see does my favorite sentencing guru, Doug Berman.

Yet, as I said above, it is not a simple issue.

LIBRARY WORKERS AND OTHERS STAGE A FATHER’S DAY “READ IN” AT MAYOR’S HOUSE TO PROTEST CUTS

According to According to the Librarians’ Guild and Save the Library campaign, the budget for city libraries has been cut by more than $20 million, and more than 150 library workers have been laid off as the city tries to reduce its projected half-billion-dollar budget deficit.

Library advocates say that when added to the hiring freeze and retirements, this latest round cuts the library staffing by a full one third, (!!!)which, they say, is one of the largest cuts to a city department.

CBS News reports:

“We have overcome disasters including earthquakes, we have risen from arson fires, but the Villaraigosa Disaster will haunt our library system for generations,” Roy Stone, president of the Librarians’ Guild, said. “The mayor has led this effort and he is succeeding in destroying one of the most important services provided to our residents.”

Libraries are essential resources, right after those dealing with public health and public safety.

Meanwhile, certain city agencies are not having their budgets slashed much at all. In fact, one is actually getting additional bucks.

More on that story tomorrow.

On Thursday, a friend who works for works for public radio in San Francisco emailed me and asked if I planned to cover the murder trial of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle.

“I woulda thought there would be more interest in So Cal given the “meta-themes” – police brutality, transit cops with attitude, race in the courts – but doesn’t seem like it…”, she wrote.

Indeed, the case is tragic and emotion-fraught, with all of the elements that our fair city would ordinarily take to obsessively:

In the early morning hours of January 1, 2009, now-resigned BART police officer, Johannes Mehserle shot and killed a 22-year-old unarmed BART passenger named Oscar Grant III. It seems Grant and some of his friends were thought to be fighting on the train and BART police were called.

At some point, Mehserle and some other officers got Grant—who is black— down on the ground with the intention of cuffing him. But then Mehserle—who is white— stood up and shot Grant in the back while a dozen or more witnesses watched.

And, this being the 21st century, at least 5 different people shot cell-phone videos that show some aspect of the shooting. (Two of those videos are in the YouTube compilation above.)

Now Mehserle is on trial for murder.

His defense attorney contends that the former BART cop intended to draw his taser but instead mistakenly and tragically the drew his service weapon— thus fatally wounding Grant.

The prosecutor says nonsense, that Mehserle deliberately shot Grant while the man was face down on the cement.

The case has aroused a deep emotional reaction throughout the Bay Area as the shocking videos of the incident played repeatedly on local TV and quickly went viral on YouTube. Large demonstrations have resulted, some of them violent.

However in LA, no one seemed to notice.

In fact emotions have run so high in the Bay Area, that the trial was moved from Alameda to downtown Los Angeles.

The trial began on June 10 and has been going on all this week, replete with lots of daily drama.—but with very little notice from the LA press.

LA Times reporter Jack Leonard has been in court every day, and told me he is fascinated by the case, yet I notice most of his stories are either buried deep in the paper, or relegated to occasional LANow blog posts (even though, as one of the paper’s top crime reporters, his work is usually featured prominently).

Other Los Angeles media outlets have been similarly lackadaisical in their coverage.

Independent LA journalist Thandisizwe Chimurenga, who has been covering the trial for a Spot.Us project, told me that when she tried to interest a couple of local outlets in her reporting, they all but yawned.

Hey, now that the Lakers have rather thrillingly won the NBA trophy (Go Artest! Go Kobe! Go Spain!), and the mini-post-victory riots and car burnings have been finally and thankfully quelled, perhaps we will need something else to occupy our….um… hearts and minds.

So maybe at least a bit of our attention will drift over to the People v. Mehserle.

The discussion continues over whether LA’s City Attorney Carmen Trutanich should be given his very own Grand Jury, which he contends that he needs. If you will remember, if he gets the thing, it is believed he will be the first City Attorney—or City Attorney-like office (the position is called something else in say, New York City or Chicago)—to have a Grand Jury at his/her disposal.

District attorneys have access to grand juries. So do attorneys general and federal prosecutors. But city attorneys? Uh, no. They just don’t.

(In fact, just for the hell of it, I called representatives of the like offices in New York and Chicago and explained what our city attorney wanted. Their reactions to the idea ranged from quizzical to a more polite version of “WTF??”)

Yet, Mr. Trutanich was so convinced he had to have one of the things that he by-passed the option of having the conversation with the city council about the matter, and then taking his request to LA voters in the form of an amendment to the city charter.

Instead he managed to get state senator Gil Cedillo to introduce a bill into the state legislature that would accomplish the deed without the inconvenience of LA city government and/or voters having to be consulted at all. To date, the state senate has passed the bill—SB 1168—and it is headed to the Assembly.

When I say “by-passed the city council,” I mean they knew zip about the bill until it was already headed for passage.

Councilwoman Jan Perry said that the first she heard about the thing was when LA Times reporter Patrick McGreevy called her to ask for a comment on the matter.

Since Los Angeles is a charter city, this kind of end run around city government is extremely unusual. Depending upon whom you ask, it is also possibly not legal.

However, Mr. Trutanich is, of course, himself an attorney, and clearly he thinks its a fine idea.

SO…. WHAT IS A GRAND JURY ANYWAY?

In case you have forgotten (or were never really sure in the first place), the purpose of a Grand Jury-–which has been an American institution since colonial days—is for a group of 16-23 ordinary citizens to review the adequacy of evidence presented by a prosecutor and then decide whether to indict the suspect or suspects. In most state courts—California included—that function is more commonly performed by a preliminary hearing in open criminal court. However, in certain cases, a Grand Jury is used instead. It is such an important tool it is enshrined in the US Constitution.
However, by its nature, a Grand Jury is particularly vulnerable to abuse because it is not subject to the same rules and balancing oversight that apply to criminal courts.

For instance, neither witnesses nor suspects who are called before a grand jury are allowed to have an attorney present when they testify. Unlike in criminal court, hearsay evidence is allowed. The accused has no right to present evidence or cross examine witnesses. Grand Juries meet in secret, and a formal record of the proceedings is not usually provided to the suspect even after an indictment.

TRUTANICH’S PROPOSED GRAND JURY IS DIFFERENT

The Grand Jury that Mr. Trutanich has asked for—and will get if SB 1168 passes—cannot indict. It can only investigate, which sort of stands the traditional purpose of the GJ on its head.

Still, like regular grand juries, it can issue subpoenas and question witnesses outside the normal rules of criminal proceedings. In other words, if used badly, it means that a prosecutor can go on evidentiary fishing expeditions that a regular criminal judge would never allow.

If passed, SB 1168, will only last as long as Mr. Trutanich is in office. It sunsets on January 1, 2014, six months after his term as city attorney has ended.

SO WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

Well, you should always care when a public official wants a lot more power than he or she is presently accorded by law.

Up until now, no one has seen the need for the LA city attorney to have Grand Jury power since the city attorney’s main job is to be the legal representative and adviser to the city and its government representatives.

However, Trutanich’s point is that LA’s City attorney also prosecutes misdemeanors. So he and representatives of his office say that he needs the Grand Jury in order to better investigate such misdemeanor issues as health insurance fraud, mortgage fraud, wage theft, product safety, workplace safety and patient dumping by hospitals—all of which can assuredly be complex.

Most specifically, Mr. Trutanich wants the grand jury for its subpoena power.

Since the announcement of the senate bill’s existence, Mr. Trutanich’s subpoena power desires have been questioned by a wide variety of people.

One of them, Raphael Sonenshein, wrote a very critical editorial in the LA Times last Friday. This was notable since Sonenshein is a scholarly sort who was the head of the Charter Reform Commission, one of the two commissions that wrote the revisions to the city’s charter that voters passed in 1999 (the first such revisions since 1925). In other words, few know LA’s governmental structure better than Raphael Sonenshein.

Sonenshein was basically aghast at the idea, and concluded his Op Ed with the following:

Any city attorney who tries to go around voters and lobby the Legislature for additional, novel and unnecessary power is exactly the wrong person to be entrusted with it. Trutanich is a textbook case of a city attorney whose actions have raised questions about how wisely he has used the power he already has.

Since his election in 2009, Trutanich has threatened city officials and private citizens with jail when they get in his way, and has abused his bail authority. One can only imagine what Trutanich would do with a secret grand jury.

The Daily News editorial board was also made queasy by Trutanich’s power grab:

“…there’s something that just doesn’t feel right about Trutanich’s latest effort….” they wrote.

TELLING RADIO MOMENTS

The Founding Dean of the UC Irvine Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky, has also questioned the legality of Trutanich’s move. Last week, Chemerinksy, who was the chair of the other committee that revised the city charter in 1999, was on Which Way LA? along with Trutanich and City Councilmember Jan Perry.

It is worth your while to listen.

On the show, both Chemerinsky and Perry were calm as they pointed out the probable illegality of what Trutanich is doing.

Trutanich, however, testily accused the city council of trying to violate his first amendment rights with their objections to his end run.

He also said that, when he acts as a prosecutor, he’s the prosecutor for the state of California, not for Los Angeles, so he is in fact empowered to go to the state for such powers.

In response, Chemerinsky basically said you’ve got to be kidding, dude, except that he said it very nicely and patiently and in much more legal detail. (The section begins at about minute 19-ish and goes to minute 21:40.)

And then there was a rather surprising exchange at minute 13:20, at which point Mr. Trutanich actually attempted to bitch-slap Warren Olney.

Taking a swing at Warren Olney under any circumstances is a move guaranteed to make anyone look bully-ish and stupid.

In Trutanich’s case, it was not a wise PR choice for a man who wants us to let him grab a bigger badder weapon than he already possesses—without discernible legal checks to hold him accountable.

Photo/LA Times

In response to a lawsuit filed in February by the ACLU and the Public Counsel Law Center, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Highberger issued an injunction on Wednesday afternoon, blocking teacher layoffs at three of LAUSD’s lowest performing middle schools—Gompers, Liechty and Markham.

The suit (Reed v. Smith) maintained that budget related teacher layoffs did not affect all the district’s schools equally—-or anything close. Since layoffs were keyed to a teacher’s seniority status, the young teachers who were often sent to troubled, inner city schools were the first to be laid off. Whereas longtime teachers, who were unaffected by layoffs, often chose to work at schools in more affluent neighborhoods.

The net result, said the suit, is that some schools in the LAUSD system lost less than five percent of their teachers. Whereas places like Markham lost 60 percent or more.

At Liechty, for example, a staggering 72 percent of the teachers received layoff notices. At Markham, almost the entire English department was pink-slipped along with every 8th grade history teacher.

This meant that the student populations who were already likely to be struggling the most, had the majority of their teachers suddenly vanish, to be replaced by a rotating group of substitutes who knew none of the students, and who may or may not be familiar with the subject they were teaching.

Thus what began as an economic matter had turned into a civil rights issue that, in fact, violated the terms of the state constitution, argued the ACLU.

Or to put the situation in more personal and human terms, here is a clip from a short statement that one of Markham’s students wrote about her experience with the layoffs:

My name is Concepciona Manuel-Flores. I’m in 7th grade at Markham Middle School. I have had about six or seven substitutes in my English class this year. My other classes are getting me ready for what I want to be (a teacher or a lawyer) but not the class with all the subs.

I think it’s probably different in other schools because they don’t have the same experience I had. I’m happy for kids in other schools who don’t lose their teachers because they’re not going
through what I am.

I always get As in school but one of the subs this year gave me a C because the sub gave that grade to everyone in class. My friend cried when she got the C and I cried a little too…….

A big thank you to Judge Highberger for issuing an injunction that stands up for the educational rights of students like Concepciona.

The LA Times’ Jason Song also reports.